Page 97 of Miss Delightful
“These are the clan colors,” Alasdhair said. “They bring out my poetical blue eyes.”
She walked a circle around him. “Gracious, Mr. MacKay, you do clean up nicely.” She ran a hand over his jacket. “Aren’t your knees cold?”
He caught her fingers in a snug grip. “When you touch me, no part of me is cold.”
He’d made her smile, though it was the faint, in-public smile rather than the naughty, mister-you-are-in-such-trouble smile he’d won from her at midnight.
Michael and Thomas Delancey came down the vicarage steps, both looking quite sober in their collars.
“MacKay, good day.” Delancey touched a finger to his hat brim. “Dorcas says we’re off to call on Lady Phoebe. Shall we be on our way?”
“Good morning, MacKay,” Michael said, eyeing Alasdhair up and down. “Battle finery?”
“Those are the MacKay clan colors,” Dorcas replied. “And I quite like seeing my intended in his national dress.” Her smile acquired a hint of mischief, and Alasdhair knew what she was thinking:I quite like seeing him in nothing at all too.
Thank heavens he’d kept that special license.
Dorcas was not smiling when Lady Phoebe’s butler ushered the party into an elegant, fussy guest parlor. Their hostess sat in an armchair upholstered in gold brocade, doubtless intended to look like a throne.
Alasdhair was introduced, and though he’d not encountered Lady Phoebe before, he pegged her for a tough old general, despite the luxury of her surroundings. She had the biddy hen’s watchful, beady eyes and the casual imperiousness of a woman accustomed to getting her way.
“Miss Delancey, you come with a veritable delegation. Are you here at such an early hour to beg funds for one of your charitable undertakings?”
The question was equal parts pleasant and rude. Dorcas, seated to Alasdhair’s right, her brother on her other side, appeared unruffled.
“Why, no, my lady. We are here to discuss your eldest grandson, and as charitable projects go, I’m sure he will soon enough be begging funds of you. More funds.”
Lady Phoebe’s gaze went cold. “Thomas Delancey, if you permit your daughter to speak to me thus, I must question your fitness to hold the living at St. Mildred’s.”
That didn’t take long.
“Must you really?” Delancey replied, his tone politely ironic. “I suggest you hear my daughter out.”
“We come to offer you a solution to a problem caused by your oldest grandson,” Dorcas began. “When I was seventeen, he inveigled my brother, who was still a minor himself, into accumulating sizable gambling debts. Isaiah bought up the vowels and agreed to hold them for Michael, provided a promissory note was signed and five percent interest paid.”
“Then Thomas Delancey raised a foolish young man,” Lady Phoebe retorted, “and because that foolishness has nothing to do with me, I will have my butler show you out.” She reached for the bell-pull as Dorcas resumed speaking.
“Your grandson promised me he’d forgive Michael’s debts if I allowed Mr. Mornebeth three instances of intimate congress with me. I was innocent, just out of the schoolroom, and determined to protect my family, though—predictably, as it turns out—Mr. Mornebeth did not forgive the debts. Do you contend that the Delanceys are a foolish, profligate, intemperate family much given to vice and self-indulgence and that they victimized your blameless grandson by repaying his loan with interest and bestowing carnal favors upon him at his insistence?”
Lady Phoebe was no longer reaching for the bell-pull.
“Mr. MacKay,” Dorcas said, “if you would take up the narrative.”
“Cast all the aspersions on the Delanceys you can,” Alasdhair said. “False aspersions, of course, and try to blame them for your grandson’s schemes if you must. That will not change the fact that Isaiah Mornebeth importunes streetwalkers, mistreats them, and has been seen kicking beggars and urinating on them. He is the nastiest kind of bully, a disgrace to the Church, and worse yet, a disgrace to his family. His behaviors have been witnessed by many, and every one of his victims is prepared to condemn him publicly. I can enumerate their observations, if you like, with dates, time of day, and location.”
Powell’s old men had supplied those last bits, for which Alasdhair had promised Mornebeth would pay dearly.
“And lest you think we are bluffing,” Dorcas added, “Mrs. Ophelia Oldbach was present at St. Mildred’s fellowship meal last evening. She heard Mr. Mornebeth referred to as the ‘pinching preacher’ by no less than four witnesses, while half my father’s congregation looked on. Mr. Mornebeth was present. Nobody doubted the testimony against him, and he decamped at a run rather than refute the charges.”
Lady Phoebe looked at her hands, which were soft, pale, and sporting a total of five rings, each more valuable than the next. If she struggled with the temptation to defend her grandson, the struggle was brief and silent.
“I sent him north to get him away from London,” she said. “I have opened every possible door for him, made sure he wanted for nothing, and this is the thanks I get.”
Dorcas rose. “You showed him, over and over again, that he would never be held to account for his many bad deeds. You supported him, you rewarded his vile behavior with opportunity. You are not the victim, my lady. You have other grandchildren, but you chose to make the worst of the lot your heir, a fact he mentions with unfailing regularity. You are complicit in his wrongs, and you will cease that complicity now.”
“He’s the smartest of the lot,” Lady Phoebe said tiredly. “He’d look after the others, for appearances’ sake if nothing else.”
“He’s so smart,” Alasdhair said, “that he thinks he can abuse women with nothing left to lose, prey on a vicar’s children, and disrespect injured soldiers on the very street, as if those people aren’t entitled to basic human dignity. Never was a man such a fool, Lady Phoebe.”
